IN THE 6th GEAR – Do you ski? Then you know the feeling: One deep breath, clutch the sticks even harder, push yourself and straight into the hillside.

Increase speed, first, second, third carve, knees and hips know exactly what is expected from them, off we go downhill – and you want this to continue forever, because it is so easy to do, like the twitter of the birds. Twitter: Here, after the schuss, memory starts to kick in again. Four holes of the GC Adamstal are already left behind, we know them as the first four of the altogether 18-hole round. In the meantime we are warmed up and ready: The journey to the lower Austrian Alpenvorland has erased successfully all stress and what follows now are landscapes out of a catalogue, fairways like carpets, Greens like parquet – and only one ball was lost at the sideways water hazard at hole 3!

Criss-cross mowed meadows simulate the rhythm, we step into this back and forth, fantastic: Golfing here is like a ski race (even though it goes up AND down here). After hole 4 we turn into the new part of the course, a L3+, as ex-rallye-star Franz Wittmann says, and we are talking about a 90 degree angle to the left, which you can take rather fast. Rhythm still stays fatuating: A narrow Par 4, which guides us to the Green with rock outcrops and a bunker. After that, hole number 6, a Par 3, with a pond to the left of the Green, which look together like Yin & Yang. Unfortunately in this case, Yin doesn’t resemble the air, but the water and is much bigger than Yang, the sky. (How long, it is going to take, to fill up Yin with balls? We keep you informed.) Hole 7, a maximum 555 metres long Par 5 seems to be the Signature-Hole. Downhill and uphill, double dogleg left-right, perfectly fitted with the landscape. At the end, a well protected Green is awaiting, which definitely needs our attention: simply to kneel down (even if the score is bad).

What follows are the eighth hole (Par 3, like all three-shot-holes in Adamstal long and not easy to play) and the wide ninth hole. After hole 10, a dogleg, left around a small forest, you arrive back on the old course, at the former hole 5 (now hole 11). Number 12 (Par 3, we suggest the name “Zwickerlbussl”) is also brand new, and after that, the most difficult hole up to then, has the perfect fitting number 13. Two already known fairways are still to come: the old seven (as 14) and the old eight (as 18). In between, there are 3 new pathways: Number 15 moves uphill as a broad Par 5, 16 is a Par 3, which shouts out loud: „Keep to the left!” (yes, it drags you down to the undergrowths). Hole 17 streams after the drive to the right onto a viewing platform, camouflaged as Green, that really is asking for a souvenir photo. Apropos Greens: There is not a lot of movement, when you look at them. Whoever is used to Adamstal, knows: This is not a neglect of the Canadian architect Jeff Howes, but very comfortable for weaker players. Watch out: When cut short, these Greens gain speed like hell.

Although rather sportive (as per Weiß with Par 70 5919 metres long; as per CR/Slope from 73/136), Adamstal is also good fun for weaker golfers. Up to five drives make the pathways lengthwise easy to digest. And even the fiercest Par 4 loses its frights, if it is consciously set up as bogey, as we know – especially, when birds are twittering.